“Of the 1 million people in the United States living with AIDS, there are approximately 20 percent of patients that are unaware they have the disease. Doctors suggest that people be tested for AIDS annually if they have participated in any activity where exchange of bodily fluids has occurred, such as blood and semen. However, only about 10-20 percent of people in the US are tested each year. . . Today, because of scientific breakthroughs, one could test for HIV antibodies in the privacy of his or her home and have results within 10 minutes.
Orawell is an Oral HIV rapid test that tests for HIV1/2, and is recommended by doctors, and is proven to be more than 99% accurate. . . . The kit comes with tools that allow patients to collect a sample of saliva and place it on a test panel for analysis. After 10 minutes, the panel should display the results as positive or negative. . . . Orawell HIV1/2 rapid test is as simple as taking a home pregnancy test. It is affordable at $29.99 and is available on Amazon and http://www.orawellusa.com.”

Par for the PR press-release course are the deceptive claim of scientific breakthroughs and the typically deceptive citation of unnamed “doctors” who recommend this test as well as annual testing. Specific to HIV/AIDS matters is the failure to point out that detection of HIV antibodies does not mean infection by HIV, and that in fact there is no test at all for HIV infection — no laboratory test, no gold standard for such a test [Weiss & Cowan , “Laboratory detection of human retroviral infection”, Chapter 8 in Wormser (ed.), AIDS and Other Manifestations of HIV Infection, Academic Press, 4th ed., 2004].

Perhaps most damaging is the entirely misleading claim that the tests are 99% accurate. Any reasonable person must take that to mean that if one tests positive, there is at most 1 chance in 100 of a false positive, at most 1 chance in 100 that one is not “HIV-positive”. However, it’s a very basic mathematical, statistical, fact that the chance of a false positive depends not only on the purported accuracy of a test but also on the prior probability of being “HIV-positive”:
If the prevalence of some condition — call it “Z” — is at a low level in a population, 1% say, then out of an average 100 tested persons 1 will actually be Z-positive. A test that is 99% accurate means that i of every 100 tests will be wrong. So with population prevalence of 1% and test of 99% accuracy, there will be an equal number of true positives and false positives, 1 per 100 in each case. In other words, there is a 50% chance that an apparent, reported, “positive” is in reality a false positive.
The prevalence of “HIV-positive” in the United States is well under 1%, so the average chance of a false-positive test is greater than 50% with tests of 99% specificity and sensitivity.
The damage is considerable to any individual classed as “HIV-positive”: It’s a severe psychological blow (also to the individual’s family and associates), and in many cases becomes physical harm as well owing to “treatment” with the highly toxic medications.

It is simply unconscionable that people are urged to take HIV tests without being told of the high probability of a false positive and the damage potentially accruing from that.

19 Responses to “Health-Threatening and Life-Threatening Tests”

Guysaid

Henry Bauersaid

Guy:
Great question! You should ask Orawell.
As far as I know, new tests are “validated” against previous ones. The Ur-Test, the original antibody test, was the Abbott ELISA.
How that antibody test morphed into a test for “HIV infection” is delineated by Rodney Richards (who worked on the Abbott test) in Appendix II of Celia Farber’s book, Serious Adverse Events.

Guysaid

The reason I ask is that from what I have seen in clips and read is that the same people can get different results by sending in a second sample with a different profile that puts themselves in a different risk group. Also, some people get different results by sending their blood to two different testing entities. These were in reference to Elisa and Western Blot. Do you get 99% accuracy in Africa with only two positive bands, but it takes three in the U.S. and four in Australia?

Martinsaid

Hi Dr. Bauer, nice to see you’re back. Hmmm! Validated against previous ones. If that isn’t circular logic. As you know accuracy and reliability can’t be established unless its validity has been demonstrated. The mendacity is assuming the previous “ones” had been authentically validated. But we know this can’t be because the guy.who patented the test didn’t validate it either. It’s Gallo’s dirty little secret.

Testing — testing — testing. Ah, yes, that proverbial misleading ritual or praying at the pulpit, as I’d like to call it, but Henry, I was under the impression any positive reaction on the myriad of tests out there are all “false” positives [emphasis on false]. That is, if there’s no detection of supposed virus, then every single one of them would indeed be false/fake/bogus.

There might some light at the end of the tunnel, albeit a bit dim. Mainstream says, “Testing falls dramatically short of the CDC’s recommendation that everyone between the age of 13 and 64 undergo routine screening”, or in other words, testing stalled.

Henry Bauersaid

Brian Carter:
Indeed, ALL positive “HIV” tests are false in the sense that they do not detect “HIV”.
In fact, they don’t even detect antibodies to “HIV”, they detect substances that were often present in AIDS patients in the 1980s.
But EVEN IF THE MAINSTREAM POSITION WERE CORRECT, it would still be a mathematical, statistical fact that in the American population at large, tests having 99% “accuracy” would deliver FALSE positive “HIV” results more than 50% of the time.
In other words, official statements and urgings for universal HIV testing are shameful ON THEIR OWN GROUNDS for failing to warn the public, the medical community, the media — everyone, in fact — that all “positive” “HIV” tests should be viewed as highly fallible and unreliable, and should not be taken as proof of “HIV infection” unless there is other direct, clinical evidence of such infection.

So, in other words, it’s an illusion–an advertising campaign, but this isn’t what people who use these tests believe. They believe 99% accuracy to mean 99% if the tests turn out to be positive, then they must be right. This is what prevents anyone labeled “HIV” from questioning and/or retesting.

mecurioussaid

what hurting people is all about the stigma of telling people that they maybe infected by HIV, emotionally they can hurt themselves, after reading and surfing the net, i must say, getting tested can actually turn out to be disastrous as how people around would react to it, due to how little they actually know about HIV/AIDS,

most countries still fail to inform the specific information on what it’s all about…

are all the current research that have been done to know more about the Virus is based on Gallo’s research alone?

Henry Bauersaid

mecurious:
Vast amounts of so-called HIV/AIDS research are not based on anything Gallo published, but his role was crucial in establishing the dogma with the help of the press conference by the Secretary for Health and Human Services

BornSkepticsaid

Henry, i have a plan for finally putting this HIV garbage in the historical dustbin. Somehow we need to contact and work with all the PACs and Patient Advocacy Groups associated with cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke and let these people know just how absurdly skewed the funding is towards “Research” into a supposed cure for HIV. I think the best way to undermine this ideology is to remove the billions of dollars of funding being poured into it. If you look at how much the NIH spends per patient death for HIV as compared to per death for cancer, diabetes, heart disease the difference is horrendous. This whole ideology is driven by money. Remove the money and the ponzi scheme collapses. Once the money factor is removed, those fanatics will quickly move onto some other topic to invest all their time in protecting.

Henry Bauersaid

Josephsaid

The prior probability of someone taking an HIV test having HIV will be much higher than 1% – unless you are an idiot you only take the test if think you are at real risk. If it is positive you will have further confirmatory tests and then viral PCR, which will confirm or correct the result of this screening test. What is all this psychologically damaging stuff – arent we all grown ups, used to accepting life is not completely simple?
All these kits are tested against known positive samples, and known negative samples. They are extremely accurate. It is of course correct that they cannot detect what is not there – so it is possible to be exposed to the virus, but not to have developed the antibodies the tests detect.

Henry Bauersaid

Joseph:
You seem to be unaware of the continuing urging by official agencies including the CDC that everyone be tested for HIV; and that between 1/4 and 1/2 pf all American adults have been tested at least once. In Washington DC, the Mayor has joined CDC in this urging, and they have set up a “pilot” program to do just that, test everyone irrespective of risk group.
You seem to be unaware also of the article Stanley H. Weiss & Elliot P. Cowan, “Laboratory detection of human retroviral infection”, chapter 8 in Gary P. Wormser (ed.). AIDS and Other Manifestations of HIV Infection. London etc.: Academic Press; 2004 (4th ed.). which states quite clearly that there is no such thing as a “confirmatory” HIV test, that all tests commonly so called are merely supplemental, because there is no gold standard HIV test.
I don’t understand what you mean by psychologically damaging. What is potentially damaging is to make assertions like yours that run directly counter to the authoritative mainstream literature.

In some states, if you are a pregnant woman, an HIV test is mandatory. And in many states (and provinces) if you refuse an HIV test that is taken as an admission you already know you are positive (especially if you are black, poor, have a history of drug use etc.) and on that basis they can assume the baby is positive at birth and forcibly medicate it. There are other situations under which HIV tests are coercive, such as getting a visa to some countries. I guess someone might say you don’t need to get pregnant and don’t need to travel to countries that require HIV tests…